The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission held a hearing on Mar. 2 titled “Part of Your World: US-China Competition Under the Sea.” The session warned that China’s rapidly expanding undersea military capabilities and seabed activities threaten Taiwan’s security and could potentially weaken the United States’ ability to provide assistance.During the hearing, Dr. Michael Horowitz, director of Perry World House and Richard Perry Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, stated that China’s rapid expansion of uncrewed underwater vehicles (UUVs) and seabed sensor networks is aimed squarely at countering US military intervention in a Taiwan contingency, particularly within the First Island Chain.In his testimony, Horowitz warned that if Beijing succeeds in making the Taiwan Strait more “transparent” through advanced sensing and AI-enabled tracking, it could erode America’s long-standing undersea advantage and weaken deterrence in any future crisis over Taiwan.The hearing also referenced lessons from the deployment of drones in the Russia-Ukraine war, referring their potential application in a Taiwan conflict or future maritime warfare.Vice Admiral Richard Seif, commander of US Submarine Forces, remarked, “The future is here.” He noted that the path ahead involves a “greater scope and scale with regard to what [we are] being asked to do in the uncrewed world.” Seif indicated that the next evolution will involve pairing unmanned systems with artificial intelligence and quantum computing to make them “more effective, more efficient,” and ultimately, “more ubiquitous.”